Here are the top 30 most spoken languages in the world, based on the latest available data:
Top 30 Languages by Number of Speakers
- 1. English: 1.5 billion speakers
- Native speakers: 380 million
- Second language speakers: 1.12 billion
- 2. Mandarin Chinese: 1.2 billion speakers
- Native speakers: 941 million
- Second language speakers: 199 million
- 3. Hindi: 609 million speakers
- Native speakers: 345 million
- Second language speakers: 264 million
- 4. Spanish: 560 million speakers
- Native speakers: 484 million
- Second language speakers: 76 million
- 5. Arabic: 422 million speakers
- Native speakers: 313 million
- Second language speakers: 109 million
- 6. French: 321 million speakers
- Native speakers: 74 million
- Second language speakers: 247 million
- 7. Bengali: 284 million speakers
- Native speakers: 242 million
- Second language speakers: 42 million
- 8. Portuguese: 267 million speakers
- Native speakers: 250 million
- Second language speakers: 17 million
- 9. Russian: 253 million speakers
- Native speakers: 145 million
- Second language speakers: 108 million
- 10. Indonesian: 252 million speakers
- Native speakers: 75 million
- Second language speakers: 177 million
- 11. Urdu: 246 million speakers
- Native speakers: 78 million
- Second language speakers: 168 million
- 12. German: 134 million speakers
- Native speakers: 76 million
- Second language speakers: 58 million
- 13. Japanese: 126 million speakers
- Native speakers: 124 million
- Second language speakers: 2 million
- 14. Nigerian Pidgin: 121 million speakers
- Native speakers: 5 million
- Second language speakers: 116 million
- 15. Egyptian Arabic: 119 million speakers
- Native speakers: 84 million
- Second language speakers: 35 million
- 16. Marathi: 99 million speakers
- Native speakers: 83 million
- Second language speakers: 16 million
- 17. Vietnamese: 97 million speakers
- Native speakers: 86 million
- Second language speakers: 11 million
- 18. Telugu: 96 million speakers
- Native speakers: 83 million
- Second language speakers: 13 million
- 19. Turkish: 91 million speakers
- Native speakers: 85 million
- Second language speakers: 6 million
- 20. Western Punjabi: 90 million speakers
- 21. Swahili: 87 million speakers
- Native speakers: 4 million
- Second language speakers: 83 million
- 22. Tagalog: 87 million speakers
- Native speakers: 33 million
- Second language speakers: 54 million
- 23. Tamil: 86 million speakers
- Native speakers: 79 million
- Second language speakers: 7 million
- 24. Yue Chinese: 86 million speakers
- Native speakers: 85 million
- Second language speakers: 1 million
- 25. Wu Chinese: 83 million speakers
- Native speakers: 83 million
- Second language speakers: negligible
- 26. Iranian Persian: 83 million speakers
- Native speakers: 65 million
- Second language speakers: 18 million
- 27. Korean: 82 million speakers
- Native speakers: 81 million
- Second language speakers: 1 million
- 28. Hausa: 94 million speakers
- Native speakers: 58 million
- Second language speakers: 36 million
- 29. Thai: 71 million speakers
- Native speakers: 27 million
- Second language speakers: 44 million
- 30. Javanese: 69 million speakers
Note that the numbers may vary depending on the source and criteria used to define a language or a speaker ¹.
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